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A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
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Our Genealogy Helper

Introduction ...

We have a couple of goals for our Gazetteer:

  • That it be a tool which helps us with planning our trips.
  • We're trying to shape our Gazetteer as a tool to help us understand the community in which our ancestors lived, the community that was part of their daily lives.
  • On our trips, we try to visit those places where our ancestors left their footprints.

By learning about Elton (and the surrounding area) during the time that our ancestors lived, we hope to have a better understanding of both their community and its relationship to their lifes. We hope that this tool helps to give us an insight into their world.

As we add data and organize our Gazetteer to help with our family research, we will be adding to this our Genealogical Helper for Elton. While we don't have information that is specific to any given person or family, we intend to expand our understanding about where and how people lived.

Neighboring Counties ...

When searching for family records, we have frequently made the mistake of not checking the neighboring counties.

For example, we have great-grandparents who lived in the southwest corner of their home county. During their lives, most hospitals and doctors were in the next county to the west. Almost all of the nearby churches and cemeteries were in the county to the south.

So when searching for records, we had our best success by looking in neighboring counties instead of the county in which they lived:  their home county contained property and probate records; the county to the west contained birth and death records; the county to the south contained their burial records. If we hadn't included the neighboring counties, we would have missed many valuable sources of information.

If you're in a similar situation, we hope that the following information helps.

Elton is located in Dickens County.

To see how the shape of Texas' counties may have changed over time, we recommend the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Dickens County: Cottle, Crosby, Floyd, Garza, Kent, King, Motley & Stonewall.

Below are the counties that are near Elton. For each of these counties, we show a sample of those communities that are closest to Elton:

  • Dickens County     (The home county of Elton)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Elton, with the one closest to Elton listed first.
    • Afton
      (4 miles [6.4 km] to the north)
    • Dickens
      (5 miles [8 km] to the south)
    • McAdoo
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the west)
    • Spur
      (15 miles [24.1 km] to the south)
      • Spur is located in Dickens County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Spur
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 1,167 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Spur <1>
  • Cottle County
    • Narcisso
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the northeast)
      • Narcisso is located in Cottle County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Narcisso
  • Crosby County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Elton, with the one closest to Elton listed first.
    • Mount Blanco ‑ Historic
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the west)
      • Mount Blanco is located in Crosby County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Mount Blanco
    • Crosbyton
      (23 miles [37 km] to the west)
  • Floyd County
  • Kent County
  • King County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Elton, with the one closest to Elton listed first.
    • Dumont
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the east)
    • Guthrie
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the east)
  • Motley County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Elton, with the one closest to Elton listed first.
    • Roaring Springs
      (13 miles [20.9 km] to the north)
    • Russellville ‑ Historic
      (17 miles [27.4 km] to the northeast)
      • Russellville is located in Motley County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Russellville
    • Matador
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the north)

For an expanded list of the communities that are closest to Elton, see our County-by-County Page for Elton.

Cemeteries Near Elton ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Elton.

This is a new section and is likely to have errors. If you find an error, such as a missing cemetery or we have the wrong name, please let us know. If you know of them, we would also appreciate learning about previous or alternate names.

Although we don't have the information ourselves, if you need information about a burial or interment, photos, transcripts, how to contact the cemetery or local authorities, please visit our list of websites on our Genealogy Helper Page for Elton - one of the links might be able to help.

If not found below, our Cemetery List for Elton covers a larger area, with the cemeteries listed in alphabetical order.

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Elton, with the one closest to Elton listed first.

  • Amity Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the northeast)
  • Afton Cemetery
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the northeast)
  • Dickens Cemetery
    (5 miles [8 km] to the south)
  • Espuela Cemetery
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the south)
  • McAdoo Cemetery
    (10 miles [16.1 km] to the west)
  • Scott Cemetery
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the north)
  • Roaring Springs Cemetery
    (14 miles [22.5 km] to the north)
  • Antelope Cemetery
    (18 miles [29 km] to the northwest)
  • Dumont Cemetery
    (19 miles [30.6 km] to the east)
  • Mt. Zion Cemetery
    (20 miles [32.2 km] to the west)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Mt. Zion Cemetery
    • To give a relative sense of its location, the Mt. Zion Cemetery is located 2 miles [3.2 km]<3> to the east of Crosbyton.
    • The Mt. Zion Cemetery has also been known as:
    • Crosbyton Colored Cemetery
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #969411 <2>
  • East Mound Cemetery
    (21 miles [33.8 km] to the north)
  • Crosbyton Cemetery
    (21 miles [33.8 km] to the west)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Crosbyton Cemetery
    • To give a relative sense of its location, the Crosbyton Cemetery is a large cemetery that is located less than 2 miles<3> to the northeast of Crosbyton.
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #3122 <2>
  • Lakeview Cemetery
    (26 miles [41.8 km] to the northwest)
  • Whiteflat Cemetery
    (27 miles [43.5 km] to the north)

Nearby Communities in 1895 ...

We've built the following list with information that came from an Atlas published by Rand McNally in 1895. The Atlas had details such as the population of the community (which appears to have come from the 1890 Census) and whether there was a post office and/or railroad service available. We also indicate if the community no longer exists and is now historic.<4>

While we didn't find Elton in the Atlas, the following 1895 communities would have been found near the current location of Elton.

These communities are listed based on their distance from Elton, with the one closest to Elton listed first.

  • Matador
    (21 miles [33.8 km] to the north)
  • Mount Blanco ‑ Historic
    (21 miles [33.8 km] to the west)
    • Mount Blanco is located in Crosby County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Mount Blanco

We've also created an expanded list of communities that existed in the 1890's and were located in the area around Elton. See our List of 1890's Communities around Elton.

Newspapers Published in Elton ...

An ongoing effort between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has resulted in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).

To share their results, the partnership has created the Chronicling America website. The goal of this partnership is to assemble a database about the current and historic newspapers of the United States. This includes a growing collection of scanned images from selected papers. All of it available to the public on their website.

Using information that we've taken from the Chronicling America website, we've identified 11 newspapers that have been published in the area around Elton.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Elton, there are papers which were published within 23 miles [37 km]<3>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Elton.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we begin with the websites from Cyndi's List, FamilySearch and Genealogy Trails. These professional and volunteer websites offer the information directly or else point to where you can find it. Their information is open to everyone.

To help you get started, the following links will take you to the pages that are relevant to Elton:

Footnotes ...

<1>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<2>The Find-a-Grave website is an excellent research tool with information about a cemetery's location and interments. They also offer a forum for their members which can provide additional help. More information about Find-a-Grave can be found on their website: findagrave.com.
<3>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'point-to-point' distance. A straight line distance ignores things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line from Point A (ie- Elton) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.
<4>We use the term 'Historic' broadly and it generally means that the community no longer exists. However, it can also mean that the community might still exist, but was significantly larger or had a more 'official' existence in the past than it does now. Unfortunately our sources of data have proven to be unreliable. If you can provide us with more specific information about Elton, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.